What Are We Afraid Of?

 

I often hear people say: I am so afraid.

We are afraid of many things, real and unreal. Growing up, as children, often adults threaten with fearful outcomes if we do not eat, sleep, or do what we should be doing.

I remember our ayah, the woman who took care of my sisters and me while we were children, would often scare us by saying an old man with a sack would take us away if we were naughty or disobedient. For years, I had a recurring dream, a nightmare really, of an old man with the sack coming up to the house to take me away. I was running, terrified, not being able to move.

Patients come to me with various fears: of flying, of fire, of water. Some of these fears are real in the sense that people have witnessed a plane crash or a fire or experienced almost drowning. It could have been in this life or a past life.

I had a patient who was petrified of flying. During a hypnosis session, she saw a past life in which her mother died in a plane crash, a crash she witnessed as a child. Through the therapeutic process of seeing this incident and erasing the memory, the patient was able to work through that the plane crash was from another life and in this life, it may not happen. Her fear lifted, and she was able to travel by air without anxiety.

Fear is a natural human emotion, and some fears protects us. For example, if a speeding car comes at you, fear of being hit or run over will make you get out of its way. This is a good fear. But other fears that are sometimes irrational, meaning they do not have a basis, are often passed down to us from our ancestors, or those around us.

During the pandemic, we were afraid that either we or others around us would die. And people did die. But it is the fear that stays in our minds, even when the pandemic has passed.

We fear loss: loss of people we love – parents, siblings, partners, children, and friends. There is fear of loss of face, money, careers; fear of ageing, losing our youth and eventually death. And fear of change and that thing will not be what they are.

But we are changing all the time, without realising it. We are afraid that we will not be able to adapt to changes that confront us, including loss. If we were to accept that loss is a part of life – from keys to a loved one – we can cope better.

If we do not understand and handle fear, it can destroy our everyday lives and paralyse us. We find it difficult to cope and are anxious. The fears of the past creep into the present and are projected into the future. It ruins our mental and physical health.

In therapy, the goal is to get in touch with ourselves, to find our authentic selves. It is when we become detached from our true nature, we are afraid. We do not trust ourselves, our intuition and do not think clearly. Therapy helps us to become aware of the conditions in which we are raised and how this affects us in our present lives. It helps to get in touch with the roots of our fears and gives skills and tools to cope with difficult emotions, including fear.

It is not possible that we will never be afraid. But we can manage our fears and learn to tell the difference between rational and irrational fears.